By TIM GRAY

July 12, 2014

MANAGERS of three of the better-performing mutual funds of the second quarter toted up their returns by hewing to the old-time virtue of patience.

All three like to hang on to favored companies for years, while the average actively managed stock fund tracked by Morningstar turns over two-thirds of its portfolio annually. They’re bulldogs in a world full of whippets.

The Dividend Hunters

Daniel Peris, co-manager of the Federated Strategic Value Dividend fund, says he aims to buy stocks that his fund can own for as long as they make sense for the portfolio and that he bases his selections on his three- to five-year projections of their dividend growth. The fund’s annual turnover ratio of 14.6 percent equates to an average holding period of about 6.5 years.

Low turnover isn’t the only retro quality of the fund, which Mr. Peris manages with Walter C. Bean and Deborah D. Bickerstaff. The managers specialize in buying shares of companies with robust, rising dividends, even as dividends have often fallen out of fashion. “In the last 25 years, the U.S. has gone anti-dividend,” Mr. Peris said. Many companies instead hoard cash or make shareholder payouts via stock repurchases.

Those with beefy dividends — utilities are the archetype — are regarded by some investors as stodgy and dull. Mr. Peris said they were better termed predictable. “These are older global corporations with long records of dividend payment and dividend growth,” he said. “The weight of history is on them to keep paying.” (A common stock’s total return consists of its price appreciation plus dividends.)

Such well-known names as AT&T, Kraft Foods and GlaxoSmithKline are among the bigger holdings of the fund.

Mr. Peris and his colleagues invest about a quarter of the portfolio abroad. That compares with about 5 percent for the fund’s Morningstar peers.

Besides GlaxoSmithKline, foreign companies among the fund’s recent top 20 holdings have included the oil drillers Royal Dutch Shell and Total and the drug makers Merck and AstraZeneca.

Mr. Peris’s fund, which has an expense ratio of 0.8 percent for its institutional shares, returned 8.6 percent in the second quarter, while the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index returned 5.2 percent, including dividends.

Big Bets on Brazil

The T. Rowe Price Latin America fund, managed by Verena E. Wachnitz, sticks with stocks even longer than the Federated fund does. Its annual turnover ratio is only 13 percent.

Ms. Wachnitz took over the fund in March, after working as an analyst with T. Rowe Price for about a decade. She predicted that, under her stewardship, turnover would rise but stay lower than average. “It will remain consistent with a three- to five-year investment horizon,” she said.

A theme in her portfolio is companies that will benefit from the growth of the consumer economy. She said she sees companies such as Lojas Renner, based in Brazil, as a way to benefit from a swelling middle class in Latin America. The company was one of the fund’s top holdings on May 31.

A leading apparel retailer in Brazil, Lojas Renner “has opportunities to grow and to improve its margins and efficiency,” she said. “It should do well over the medium to long term, regardless of the economic outlook in Brazil.”

T. Rowe Price is known for a growth-at-a-reasonable-price philosophy of stock-picking, and Ms. Wachnitz follows that approach. She said she mostly avoids companies in regulated sectors, like utilities and telecommunications, and those in mining, long a stalwart in South America. “We’re more selective in those industries because we see fewer growth opportunities,” she said.

In contrast, a place where the fund will almost surely continue to invest is Brazil. Running a Latin America fund necessarily means making a big bet on the country, as it’s the region’s largest economy. Brazilian stocks account for more than half of the MSCI Emerging Markets Latin America Index and 54.7 percent of Ms. Wachnitz’s fund.

Brazil has lately received much attention because of the World Cup, but a bigger factor for investors may be its election in October. President Dilma Rousseff is seeking re-election, and her policies have led to investor concern about Petrobras, the state-controlled oil and gas giant, Ms. Wachnitz said.

“Government intervention remains a key risk,” she said. “The government hasn’t allowed Petrobras to increase prices at the pump as much as it should have. It seems to be prioritizing its needs over the needs of the company.” Still, Petrobras is one of her fund’s bigger holdings because of its hefty oil and gas reserves and its potential for production growth, she said.

The fund, with an expense ratio of 1.33 percent, returned 7.2 percent in the second quarter.

Energy for the Long Run

Tim Guinness, one of the managers of the Guinness Atkinson Global Energy fund.

Jonathan Player for The New York Times

State-controlled energy companies also make up a chunk of the Guinness Atkinson Global Energy fund, though Petrobras isn’t among them. Instead, the fund, co-managed by Tim Guinness, Will Riley and Jonathan Raghorn, holds such state affiliates as PetroChina; Statoil, the Norwegian oil and gas driller; and Gazprom of Russia.

Mr. Guinness said his fund has owned Gazprom for about 18 months. He hung on when Russia annexed Crimea, even though some investors bailed out. “We bought it because it was incredibly cheap,” he said. “We were alive to the Russian risk, but the valuation was irresistible. The stock lost 15 percent, but it’s recovering.”

The shares have performed well enough lately that Gazprom has grown into the fund’s biggest holding as of May 31.

Clinging to a stock, even when it faces tumult, is typical of Mr. Guinness. His fund has a turnover ratio of 8 percent; when he likes an investment, he stays put, even if the price zigzags. “I believe in buying and holding,” he said. “I don’t think our skill set is trading, and it keeps our transaction costs down.”

Mr. Guinness, though based in London, tilts toward the United States for the fund’s investments: American companies accounted for 46.5 percent of the portfolio on May 31. Top holdings included Apache, an oil and gas driller, and Valero Energy.

The American emphasis grows out of the nature of the energy business, he said. “About half of the world’s oil and gas companies are domiciled in America, so our allocation has been about 45 percent to 50 percent from the get-go,” he said.

Mr. Guinness has managed the fund since it began in 2004. It returned 14 percent in the second quarter and has an expense ratio of 1.34 percent.

Correction: July 20, 2014

An article in the Mutual Funds & E.T.F.s Report, Part 2 of this section last Sunday, about mutual funds that registered strong performance in the second quarter, misstated a strategy of Daniel Peris, co-manager of the Federated Strategic Value Dividend fund. He aims to buy stocks that his fund can own for as long as they make sense for the portfolio, basing his selections on his three- to five-year projections for dividend growth; he does not aim “to buy stocks that his fund can hold for three to five years.”